Midsummer Fire Festival (June 21 - July 5)

Midsummer Fire Festival is here! Embrace the spirit of summer by honoring your faction's flames and desecrating the enemy's! Throughout the world, there are bonfires surrounded by questgivers and NPCs that sell summery items in exchange for Burning Blossom. There are commoner NPCs of all races that can be found lingering around the major cities that will give you a short quest to turn in at one of the main bonfire camps to get you started.

Midsummer Fire Festival begins on June 21 at 11:00 AM (PST) and runs until July 5 at 11:00 AM (PST).

Festival Bonfires

Bonfires have been spread across all of Azeroth, inviting players to honor their own faction's and desecrate those of their enemies! To honor one of your faction's bonfires, simply speak to the nearby Flame Keeper and Flame Warden and complete the quest. To desecrate an opposing faction bonfire, the quest will instead be available at the bonfire itself, where you can extinguish it for your reward.

Not only does visiting these fires grant a good bit of money for max level characters, it is also extremely good experience for pre-90 characters making this holiday very helpful for leveling alts.

You are also challenged to steal the four capital city flames of the opposing faction!

Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland, Northrend, Pandaria

Honor the Flame! - Awards Burning Blossom x5, and at level 90Start & End:Flame Keeper located near each bonfire of your faction.This quest can only be completed once per location at festival fires belonging to your faction.

Complete List

Keep in mind that every Cataclysm zone has their own bonfires. We have included them in our coordinates by continent.

Tip: Clicking on the coordinates in the tables below will open a map of the bonfire's location in a lightbox! To view your character and your mouse cursor's coordinates on the in-game world map you can use our very own addon, the Wowhead Looter (type /wl loc map), and contribute data in the process!

Neutral Bonfires

In 2011, neutral Earthen Ring bonfires were added to Cataclysm zones. These bonfires can only be honored, and will award 15 Burning Blossom upon doing so. Zones which feature an Earthen Ring Bonfire do not feature separate Alliance / Horde bonfires.

Legend

Neutral Bonfires

In 2011, neutral Earthen Ring bonfires were added to Cataclysm zones. These bonfires can only be honored, and will award 15 Burning Blossom upon doing so. Zones which feature an Earthen Ring Bonfire do not feature separate Alliance / Horde bonfires.

In addition to awarding easy gold and Burning Blossom, there are a number of player buffs that are available from the various festival fire locations.

Ribbon Pole

At each bonfire you will find a ribbon pole which creates a colorful streamer to your hand and causes your character to twirl very quickly. While doing this, you will gain the Ribbon Dance buff which increases experience gain by 10% for 3 minutes, stacking 3 more minutes on for every 3 seconds you remain twirling at the ribbon pole. The buff stacks up to a one hour duration and can stack with rested experience, so get it while it's hot! If a player throws a Burning Blossom into a festival fire, all surrounding players will gain the Fire Festival Fury buff, granting +3% physical/spell critical strike and reflecting Fire damage to attackers for 1 hour, and scales with your player level.

As if that wasn't enough, if you happen to be at a festival flame that has been extinguished and no longer burns, tossing a Burning Blossom into it will grant a zone-wide buff Bonfire's Blessing which gives your faction's players a 30% chance to inflict 10 Fire damage on any melee, ranged, or spell attack, increasing by 10 Fire damage per level.

Boss: Lord Ahune

Starting with 2010's edition of the festival, Blizzard has changed the way seasonal bosses are accessed. In previous years, a quest would lead you to a dungeon where you would find that event's boss and were able to summon him a limited number of times via quests to farm items. However, nowadays the seasonal boss encounter can be accessed through the Dungeon Finder tool, and related quests now being found inside of the dungeon. Players must be at least level 89 to queue for Ahune.

Any special items that dropped off a seasonal boss in addition to his normal drop table (such as mounts from Apothecary Hummel or Headless Horseman) will now only have a chance to drop from a loot bag which is awarded upon killing the boss for the first time per day. Players can only receive a single loot bag per day, but will be able to re-queue for the boss in order to farm the more common drops. This means no more hours upon hours of farming for the most rare of items--every player in the party will have a chance to get a rare item out of the loot bag once per day!

Ahune can be queued by selecting "The Frost Lord Ahune" in the Dungeon Finder tool, or by speaking to the Earthen Ring Elder located in any main Midsummer camp. Upon defeating Ahune for the first time per day, you will receive gold and a Satchel of Chilled Goods which contains a few Burning Blossom (about 5-15) and has a chance of containing a rare item.

Upon entering The Slave Pens, rather than having to do a quest to summon Ahune, you must first defeat the Naga who defend the Ice Stone. Use the Ice Stone to summon the boss, defeat the boss, and collect the loot from the chest! Players who have never before defeated Ahune can loot Shards of Ahune from the chest, which starts a quest that turns in at the nice tauren lady nearby and awards 20 Burning Blossom and your choice of Tabard of Summer Skies or Tabard of Summer Flames! This quest was once again not reset, so if you've already done it in the past you are out of luck.

Torch Throwing

Quests

Torch Tossing or Torch TossingStart & End:Master Flame Eater or Master Fire EaterYou must aim and throw Practice Torches at a series of braziers found nearby the questgiver. A brazier is only considered an active target when it has an arrow above it that looks like a ; non-marked braziers will not count towards the quest objective. When you use the torch you will be given a small targeting circle that you must place over an active brazier and click to toss. You are given x seconds to hit 8 targets, and if you are successful you are awarded with Burning Blossom x5 and gold (and experience, if you are lower than 80).

Torch Catching or Torch CatchingStart & End:Master Flame Eater or Master Fire EaterYou must light the Unlit Torches at the bonfire, which will then toss a flaming torch into the air. You have to follow the shadow of the torch, and then wait where it will land to "catch" it. If you miss, but are near where it lands you will suffer fire damage which can add up pretty quick if you're not yet used to the quest. When you catch the torch, there will be a very short delay before you will automatically toss it back up into the air, only this time it will travel a much shorter distance. You must "catch" the torch four times in a row to complete the quest, and you will be rewarded with Juggling Torch x5 and Burning Blossom x5.

The Guide will then give you the next part of the quest, An Innocent Disguise for which you are given an orb that changes you into a Crawler for three minutes. In your new disguise, you must travel northwest of the entrance of Blackfathom Deeps. You will know you're going the right way if you periodically find blue-flamed torches, and eventually a small encampment on the shore. While disguised, witness the exchange between the naga and the Ice Caller Briatha until the quest completes. When it is finished, you can move out of range of the mobs and cancel the disguise, and summon the Earthen Ring Guide once again. This time, upon relaying the information, the guide will give you the quest Inform the Elder, requesting that you return to an Earthen Ring Elder and report your findings.

Once you have returned to an Earthen Ring Elder, the quest chain will complete and either one or two quests will become available, depending on your level. For characters level 22 and above, a repeatable daily quest will open up. The quest is called Striking Back, and depending on your level range you will be given a single objective at a location in Azeroth or Outland.

When you turn in that quest she will give the quest Ahune is Here! and ask that you find Luma Skymother, who is located a bit further into the instance. Finally, Luma will give you the quest Summon Ahune, granting you an Earthen Ring Magma Totem allowing you to (you guessed it) summon Ahune. Use the totem at the Ice Stone located just beyond Luma and defeat Ahune to complete the quest.

King of the Fire FestivalTo obtain this achievement you must complete the quest A Thief's Reward (Alliance), which requires you to sneak into the four major cities of your opposing faction to 'steal' their festival flames. Details on stealing the flames can be found above.

Ice the Frost LordTo obtain this achievement you must defeat Ahune who can be summoned inside The Slave Pens of Coilfang Reservoir, in Zangarmarsh. Players who participated in last year's Midsummer festivities may find that they have already earned this achievement, among others. Details on summoning Lord Ahune can be found above.

Torch JugglerFor this achievement, purchase at least 10 Juggling Torch from a Midsummer vendor, and juggle them 40 times within 15 seconds while in Dalaran. Hotkey the torches and click the ground below your character to juggle them in place!

Comment by KanonGil

Comment by Snowblade

You might want to fix the pin in the bulwark. It has alliance colour but it's actually horde point.

Comment by RazerCrime

Not all the coords are correct (I guess they are not updated for cata). For example the place where the horde bonfire was supposed to be in northen strangleton is a waterfall.

Comment by Vexryn

It's worth noting that while you can buy Captured Flame, the actual name of the companion pet it teaches is Spirit of Summer. This is not a new pet for 2012.

Comment by Rzzrblade

Darnassus has moved from Rut'theran Village to inside Darnassus. It is in the Warrior's Terrace

Comment by Superbian

I parsed the bonfire locations into a waypoint-adding macro for the addon TomTom. You'll need SuperDuperMacros as well to overcome the 255 character limit. Both addons can be found at wowinterface.com.

Comment by Sooba

There's a little mistake: The guide states that northrend bonfires don't count toward any achievements. They actually do! They have their own achievements AND they count towards the big meta achievements.

Comment by ThePandaRuler

Is it possible to get all of the Midsummer Armor Set in the amount of days that the Fire Festival goes on if you go around and get, like, all of the bonfires set up around Azeroth? I dont want to buy only some of the set and not be able to buy the rest.

Comment by Wazdakka

Thank you so much for this guide! Helped me get all the fires efficiently!

-Flame Warden Wazdakka

Comment by mckaysalisbury

FYI, visiting all of the fires, gave me about 700 blossoms. Any dailies you do (like killing ahune or whatever) will increase this amount.

Comment by sharphead

The Bulwark in Eastern Kingdoms appears to be a horde fire. The map marks it as Alliance.

Comment by amccandliss

The 2013 event will have 2 new achievements, Flamekeeper of Pandaria, and Extinguishing Pandaria. It looks like there will be 7 flames to honor, one per zone, and 1 to extinguish, in the vale of eternal blossoms.

Comment by perculia

The Bulwark is marked as Horde now, and has the correct lightbox. Some other map coordinates were fixed as well, such as Darnassus, Teldrassil, Grom'gol Base Camp, and Booty Bay.

Ahune loot and quest details have been updated for level 90, and battle pet and Pandaria achievements have been added. Maps and coordinates for Pandaria bonfires are up as well.

Comment by Arjayemm

To clarify a point about the ribbon poles buff- it is for kills only. not for quest handins.

Comment by Znakoma

Ahh, thanks to the wonderful list of where the bonfires are I've managed to get all bonfire achievements. I've actually managed to get all the achievements for the whole of the Midsummer Festival on the first day. This guide helped a lot! Thanks :D

Comment by Dadilus

Pandaria Bonfire Locations

Jade Forest - bonfire is not where the map indicates so be aware of this if you are visually referring to the map above to find them rather than using co-ordinates. I have included a co-ordinate macro at the end of this post

It is at 47:47 just outside of Dawn's Blossom slightly East of the main entrance steps.

When desecrating the opposing factions fire, the NPCs do not attack you. Just be aware of sneaky rogues and such lurking stealthed ready to maim you after you desecrate their bonfire and become flagged for PvP.

If you don't have a way to find co-ordinates, here's a macro which does it for you (won't dismount you in flight). Put it on one of your action bars and click to see your location in chat.

Co-ordinates Macro/script SetMapToCurrentZone() local px,py=GetPlayerMapPosition("player") DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("You are at map position ".. (px*100)..", "..(py*100))

Comment by Liike

If you're going to just fly around and click on all the bonfires, then you can expect to make around 1,570 gold. You can also do it on all of your characters, if you want to spend the time.

- 470g from Kalimdor

- 490g from E.K.

- 210g from O.L

- 260g from Northrend/Maelstrom

- 140g from Pandaria

This includes Horde and Alliance. About 10g for each Horde site, and about 20g for each Alliance site. (Or vice versa if you're Alliance)

It is also a great way to get the Burning Blossoms. I got about 820, but I did use some to light some Horde bonfires. So you can expect to get more flowers than that. You can also spend the flowers at any of the capital cities in exchange for some goodies.

Comment by Chipol

Ahh, in my first year of WoW, I am celebrating this festival. Great guide. Thank you! :)

Comment by Weapon0

"It's that time of year again. Acquire flaming threads, a frosty companion, epic cloaks, and more!" I have to admit that part about epic cloaks made me chuckle. :P

Comment by SykoSoul

Nothing new this year. We'll hopefully see something new next year with WoD.

Comment by redrummer

Did they change the location of the fire in Ironforge, I notice that currently it is so close to the guards that lower level players have no time to collect it before they get shot. Tried this many times on an approximately 70-75 horde toon (didn't realize it was the guard shooting me...thought it was the players camping in the area).

Comment by TheManCalledZee

The waypoints in the top-rated comments is a great tool, but requires a lot of copy-pasting back and forth.

Do yourself a favor and get Candy Buckets (Midsummer) addon. Install. Open map, it shows you all locations of bonfires for quests and extinguishing, and clears them from the map automatically as you complete them.

Yes, it is integrated with TomTom.

Comment by Metalhippie

Some of your listed locations are incorrect, like in Westfall, the fire is at Stendel's Pond near Moonbrook, and for Booty Bay, the fire is outside the town itself on the Wild Shore.

Comment by ravensuzuki

For missing tabards (Horde) go to Org and talk to Garyl - you'll be able to get your "missing" Tabard of Summer Skies or Tabard of Summer Flames. Don't know if this is a bug, but I have both because of this.

As for Alliance (I'm not sure, since I only play Horde), but you can check out Lyesa Steelbrow in Ironforge to see if you can pick up your missing tabard there.

Comment by cryptid420

Eastern Kingdoms map doesn't show Vashj'ir although it is listed under the achievements on WoW. So at currently I am just going around blindly trying to find it. Will update here if I do though

Another information for all the passionate pet hunters, with the 21st of June the Qiraji Guardling is able to spawn in Silithius next to the Gates of Ahnqiraj. Good hunting! (The respawn time seems to be something around 30 minutes to 1 hour 6 hours)

Comment by sakera

Ok so my main already has all the World event achievements completed and thus has the Meta done.

I did all the Pandaria ones last year. I went back and did all the fires this morning in every other area so as to get enough Blossoms to purchase extra pets to sell.

I was unable to do any in Pandaria as there was no quest at any of the locations. So here I sit 35 blossoms short of being able to purchase another pet due to it glitching out. Guess it is back to torch tossing to hopefully get the last ones I need.

Did anyone have this happen to them? Are the Pandaria ones just a once in a lifetime bonfire?